Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West: Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics

304 Pages·2001·1.12 MB·English

by  Steve Odin

Artistic Detachment in Japan and the West

A r t i s t i c D e t a c h m e n t
i n J a p a n a n d t h e We s t
Psychic Distance in Comparative Aesthetics
STEVE ODIN
A
University of Hawai‘i Press
Honolulu
 2001 University of Hawai‘i Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 02 01 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Odin, Steve.
Artistic detachment in Japan and the west : pyschic distance
in comparative aesthetics / Steve Odin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8248–2211–0 (cloth : alk. paper) —
ISBN 0–8248–2374–5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Aesthetics, Comparative. 2. Aesthetics, European.
3. Aesthetics, Japanese. I. Title.
BH85.O34 2000
111'.85'09—dc21 00–062034
University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free
paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Council on Library Resources.
Designed by Chris Crochetière, B. Williams & Associates
Printed by The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Artistic Detachment as an Intercultural Theme 1
Part One Artistic Detachment East and West
1 Artistic Detachment in Western Aesthetics 27
2 Artistic Detachment in Japanese Aesthetics 99
3 An East-West Phenomenology of the Aesthetic
Attitude 170
Part Two Psychic Distance in Literature East and West
4 Psychic Distance in Modern Western Literature 199
5 Psychic Distance in Modern Japanese Literature 214
Glossary 281
References 283
Index of Names 291
v

Acknowledgments
I wrote this book as a 1994–1995
Fulbright scholar at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. I would espe-
cially like to thank Professor Tanaka Hideyoshi from the Aesthetics
Department as well as Professors Noe Keiichi, Ano Fumio, and Nu-
mata Hiroyuki at Tohoku University for their encouragement. Many
ideas in this volume have been developed over fifteen years of teach-
ing courses on Japanese and comparative aesthetics at the University
of Hawai‘i. Among my colleagues in the UH Department of Philos-
ophy, I would especially like to thank Professor Arindam Chakrabharti,
who has been a great source of information for this work. Among grad-
uate students in our Philosophy Department, I would like to thank
Brad Parks for his careful reading of my manuscript. Other colleagues
at the University of Hawai‘i have been profoundly instrumental in
the development of this project, especially Takie Sugiyama Lebra and
Valdo H. Viglielmo. Indeed, Professor Viglielmo’s dual expertise in
modern Japanese philosophy and modern Japanese literature has guided
the direction of this work. I would like to express my indebtedness to
Professor Steven Heine, as well, for his valuable comments on this
manuscript. Finally, Robert C. Neville, my philosophy adviser at both
the undergraduate and graduate levels, has made an important contri-
bution to the present work and his insights are cited in the following
pages.
vii

Introduction
Artistic Detachment as an Intercultural Theme
This book takes up the notion of artistic detachment, or
psychic distance, as an intercultural motif for East-West comparative
aesthetics. Specifically we will examine the notion of beauty as a func-
tion of psychic distance in Western and Japanese aesthetics, including
both the philosophical and the literary traditions. On the Western side
I underscore the notion of artistic detachment that developed from the
revolution in aesthetics initiated by Kant’s much celebrated (as well
as much criticized) idea of beauty as a function of disinterested con-
templation. On the Eastern side I highlight the Japanese notion of
beauty as hidden depths apprehended through artistic detachment, a
concept developed both in traditional Zen aestheticism and its refor-
mulation in the Kyoto school of modern Japanese philosophy. Insofar
as representative philosophers in the Kyoto school adopt an East-West
comparative framework rooted in a Japanese Buddhist metaphysics of
nothingness, they set forth a theory of disinterested aesthetic contem-
plation that synthesizes elements from both the Kantian and Zen Bud-
dhist traditions. Furthermore, I endeavor to clarify how artistic detach-
ment has been developed as a central motif in “portrait-of-the-artist”
novels in Japanese and Western traditions of literary aestheticism.
Portrait-of-the-artist novels in both traditions articulate a detachment
theory of art in which beauty is a function of an act of disinterested
contemplation. Moreover, the artistic detachment motif is related to
plot and character development insofar as the protagonist is typically
a young artist who cultivates heightened aesthetic consciousness
through disinterested contemplation to the point of extreme alienation.
Furthermore, artistic detachment is built into the structure of an im-
partial narrative that records satori-like epiphanies, or haiku moments
of sudden illumination, whereby the hidden depths of ordinary events
are disclosed through acts of disinterested contemplation. Ultimately
the goal of portrait-of-the-artist novels in both Japanese and Western
literature is transmutation of life into art through psychic distance.
1